Feature Tracking and Visualization of Madden-Julian Osciallation in Climate Simulation
Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is one of the less understood aspects of tropical meteorology, which plays a significant role in tropical intra-seasonal variations in rain, temperature and winds over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In this paper, we present an integrated analysis and visualization framework for MJO episodes simulated by a high resolution regional model. To distinguish MJOs from other weather phenomena, our framework utilizes domain knowledge to track MJOs as finding the globally optimized properties in the data. In addition to enhancing the animation with feature tracking, our visualization system also integrates different visualization components such as Virtual Globe and Hovmoller Diagrams to visualize large scale events both in space and time. By linking all of these visualization components on a web-based interface, scientists can identify cloud and environmental processes associated with the initiation and eastward propagation of MJO more easily.